Trends on the Korean Peninsula and Soviet Policy Toward Korea: Implications for U.S.-Japan Relations

Nearly two years ago, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev delivered a major address in Vladivostok. In this speech -- the English translation of which ran to twenty single-spaced pages -- there are only three brief references to the Korean Peninsula a one-sentence allusion to the militarized Washington-Tokyo-Seoul triangle allegedly taking shape and equally brief allusion to U.S. deployment of nuclear-weapons delivery vehicles and nuclear warheads in Korea and endorsement of North Koreas proposal for the creation of a nuclear-freeze zone on the Korean Peninsula and a vague, two- sentence reference to the possibility of progress toward reducing tension on the Peninsula. Although Gorbachev expressed the USSRs intention to give more dynamism to its bilateral relations with all countries situated here, without exception, notably missing from his lengthy list of non-communist AsianPacific nations twelve with whom the Soviet Union is ready to expand its ties was any reference to South Korea. Keywords Foreign policy, International relations.